Beneath your skin
by SomeCoolName
Summary: It's not because Sherlock Holmes isn't here anymore, that he is dead. So John Watson seeks him, and he will find him, no matter the cost.
1. John Watson

Note : Hello everyone. Here's my first fanfiction with chapters, based on the Sherlock BBC fandom. It's a reinterpretation of what happened right after the fall in the brilliant (but heartbreaking) Reichenbach episode. You can then forget season 3 or even the Arthur Conan Doyle books if you read them.

Beta : The absolutely lovely **PJTL156**!

Rating : T, because I thought I wrote about angst and hurt/comfort enough with _Closer to things_ but apparently, no. And swears. And sex. Sometimes.

Reviews : that would mean the world to me, because I'm not writing my stories in english but in french, then translating them, then **PJTL156** fixes the mistakes so I'd like to know what you dear readers think!  
Meanwhile, enjoy your reading.

* * *

John opens his eyes, and it's not a day like any other. The sun is up, he easily distinguishes the furniture around him, and he can hear the noise downstairs. It's today. He gets up and his bed base squeals. It's not the kind of thing that really matters now. It's almost by automatism he gets in his grey suit, the one he chose yesterday evening. Maybe he should have chosen the black one. Or maybe the navy-blue one. He really doesn't care, anyway.

He goes down and runs into Lestrade on the landing. He didn't remember the copper having so many grey hairs, but it's a day hard enough already to additionally notice it. He accepts without a word the hand on his shoulder that squeezes, and squeezes again, like it could prevent him from falling. His British eyes automatically land on the steaming teapot; the liquid comfort of a whole nation. He sits, greets Mrs. Hudson with his right hand, and she leans in to kiss his forehead.

"Gregory, don't forget to pick up Molly at eleven."

"Right, Mrs. Hudson. Who will drive you to the ceremony?"

"I think John wanted to..."

They turn around in a same discreet breath and examine beyond their shoulders the doctor seated at the kitchen table, arms folded, his eyes attached to the steam coming out of the teapot. The older woman sighs and smiles, sorry, to the DI she's leaving there, before quickening her pace to the cupboard above the sink.

"Well, my boy, you won't go very far without a cup! Let me find you one..." she proposes with a light smile she's overdoing beyond what's bearable.

Her fingers land on the first white porcelain she finds, and all of John's soul tears up.

"No!" he shouts, making all of them shiver.

He inspires, unclenches his left fist that banged the table, pinches his lips to relax, and raises his gaze to his landlady.

"Not that one."

It's not more of a voice than a growl, and the older lady understands. She puts back the bereaved cup and her eyes dither. In the end, it's John who stops her ordeal by leaving the room.

* * *

There was no more free space in the parking lot and John is certain they can't all come for Him. With his right arm, he holds up Mrs. Hudson, whose body struggles to move on the gravel path. They see every shade of black: the one worn, the one in the bereaved eyes, the one in the murmured condolences. The crematorium is right in front of them and John thinks about all the time they saw it, ready to see another body, another death.

This one is much more difficult, of course; it's beyond compare, but nobody told him it would be _this_ hard. At school, they teach you to count, to read, fractions, and the French revolution, but they don't teach you how to say goodbye to your best friend. They teach you to remember the past and they forget the future that taunts you. But John is a soldier who faced war; it's been a long time since he had learned you don't learn how to live a life thanks to books and blackboards.

They bump into Gregory in the entrance, wrapped in an oh-so-very solemn black coat that automatically makes the soldier regret he didn't opt for his other suit. Never mind, it was the kind of detail He couldn't care less about.

"Where's Molly?" asks the landlady, whose right hand already landed on Lestrade's forearm; she nearly falls at every step and they all know it.

"She whispered something about her mascara fading, then she disappeared to the loo."

"I told her to wear waterproof. It's fairly obvious, don't you think?"

"Fairly obvious, yes," repeats the DI with a smile to his unique male accomplice who doesn't even make a dent in his fixed lips.

They see some of the DI's discreet colleagues, the only ones that really supported the detective. They're coming to greet them grudgingly; their lips dry by the London cold. The modest crowd becomes scarce and they know the ceremony is about to start. They guide Mrs. Hudson to the Lilac room (the older man tried to make a joke on the fact that their friend would have rolled his eyes just by reading the flower names given to the rooms, but the soldier didn't react), and they settle on small wooden chairs in front of the coffin. It's the lamest show John ever saw, and yet, he's seen a four-hour German performance with puppets made of corks.

He feels a hand on his shoulder and he turns around. Molly Hooper, red eyes and cheeks still a little bit tinted with poorly washed out black mascara, smiles to him. He taps her hand, nods to silently answer to her empathy, and takes his jacket off the chair so she can have a seat next to him. He can sense she opens and closes her lips several times, but he'd prefer if they not talk. So he puts his hand on hers and squeezes.

"Where's Mycroft?!" suddenly asks Mrs. Hudson, outraged, turning over to scrutinise the room.

This time, faced with his landlady's curiosity, John inhales to a point that it hurts his lungs; he clenches his fists, ready to put them in the bastard's face if he dares to show up, but Gregory answers with a negative shake of the head that tempers his spirit.

"... Still, he was his brother..." she murmurs, before settling back into the back of the chair that already hurts her arthritis.

They were brothers, John is absolutely certain of this, so to draw from this the conclusion, they shared the same blood. This is unacceptable. A brother teaches you how to ride a bike, steals the best place on the living-room sofa in front of the telly, or asks you to cover for him when he goes to see his girlfriend; he doesn't teach you to loathe IQ below 180, to know the coagulation time for a tongue cut in two, and above all, in no case (unless you live in a bloody Shakespeare book) does your brother feed you to the Wolf wrapped in a Westwood costume.

But Mycroft is not here today, and that's all that matters. The other Holmes is here, however, laid down in a wood box, but He's here. John looks at it and scrutinises it, because no matter if tomorrow his feet bring him back to Baker Street, on the worst crime scene, or in front of the most outstanding landscape, He won't move. Somehow, John's not sure a small part of himself isn't locked in this way-too-big box also. A small part that took the shape of the sweat on his neck when he was running, of his breath he was losing, of his heart which beat in his chest when the danger wasn't a quixotic word anymore, but that never, ever made his hands shiver. A part of him He woke up with. A simplicity as big as tomorrow will be unbearable.

The soldier didn't want to talk in front of the small crowd. The ceremony was discreet, quick. It's hard to talk about someone's life when he gave his to death. So, it's Mrs. Hudson that gets up first, goes to the podium and reads the text she chose. She coughs a little, smoothes out the folds on her black skirt, and slides her glasses onto her nose, which are tied around her neck thanks to a thin silver chain.

"Well... I know he didn't believe in God. I mean, all the things he kept in his fridge _did_ prove it."

There's a purring laugh in the cold room that warms up the most wounded hearts. John also smiles, but in front of Lestrade's interrogative face, he just shakes his head _no_. He prefers not to confess to half of the pieces of evidence from those past years that ended up in their fridge between butter and beer.

"But to guide him to the Lord, I chose this Martin Gray text that would have made him roll his eyes. Good, I always enjoyed bothering him a bit," she confides with a melancholy smile.

She clears her throat, tightens up the already crumpled paper with her shaking hands, and reads:

"'Being faithful to those who died, is not locking yourself into pain. You have to keep digging furrows, straight and deep. Like they would have done themselves. Like we would have done with them, for them. Being faithful to those who died, is to live like they would have lived, make them live inside you, pass on their faces, their voices and their messages, to the others. To a son, to a brother, or to strangers, to the others, whoever they might be. And life truncated with lost will then grow eternally.'"

John sighs, but smiles. He would have rolled his eyes for sure.

* * *

His hands in his pockets, jacket buttoned to his collar, John looks at the car slowly leaving, like a sad ballet. Without a word, Lestrade leans next to him and hands him his almost empty cigarette pack.

"Do I tell you the usual speech about how _I thought you stopped_, or is it not worth it?''

"It's not worth it, but thanks anyway."

They politely smile at each other, not really sure if they want to talk about their health this close to a graveyard, and the DI puts back the cigarettes in his pocket.

"Did you notice the black car during the grounding?"

"Foolproof. _The Queen_ is really not discreet."

"I thought you were going to stop the ceremony to go and crack his jaw."

"If Mrs. Hudson had not been attached to my arm, that's probably what I would have done."

This time, it's a frantic laugh that escapes from the knotted throat of the older man. He blows the toxic smoke from the corner of his tight-lipped mouth and turns his head toward his friend.

"He must have been a really weird older brother."

"Thanks to him, now growing up with an alcoholic sister seems much more enjoyable."

"I'm sure he cried at the cinema when Palpatine died."

"They never saw Star Wars," confesses John with the first non-forced smile of the day.

"Nasty bastard; he _was_ the worst big brother on earth, then."

They look at each other from the corner of their eyes and burst into laughs. It's because of the nerves, of course; it's not funny, but, oh, how letting themselves drift for a few seconds is pleasant. So, they let themselves slip into the unsuspected winding of a temporary hysteria. The dripping tears have thousands of reasons to be, but they don't care, they laugh until it hurts their belly and throat and it's perfect like this. They calm down when Mrs. Hudson comes back, attended by Molly whose tender smiles are the best balm.

They go back to Baker Street for one last tea; some mentioned memories are even better than the small biscuits the older lady puts in a ceramic plate. Everything is very calm, their murmurs are as precious as a lullaby, and John won't ask them for more. He feels he's drowning, slowly, oh-so-very-slowly, since a few days ago, and even the soldier that sleeps deep inside of him doesn't seem to care to struggle. It will pass, one day, maybe. Meanwhile, the silence is the best shield he could dream of. So, seated on a Formica chair in his landlady's kitchen, he watches life: Mrs. Hudson remonstrance's to Lestrade and _his bloody smoking habit_, the discreet yawns of Molly Hooper who forgot all about sleep since three days ago, and the empty teapot they don't refill after the second time. Life goes on; he will catch up to it when he feels able to.

* * *

John opens his eyes and it's been two months since He's been gone. He doesn't work today, but he'll go to the clinic anyway, just to check if they don't need any help.

This job he got thanks to Sarah. Of course, she couldn't afford to hire him again, so she recommended him to a distant cousin, whose clinic needed to find doctors. Hackney, it's not as bad as the Bronx, but with its weekly murder, Londoners are not particularly fond of this neighborhood. When Molly knew John had found a job, her smile was worth millions. When he told her where the clinic was, she felt obligated to show him every body she had who had been stabbed, strangled, or burnt in Hackney.

However, John smiled. When he was following Him to every corner of the city on the most sordid cases, she always wished them a good evening. Since He's not here anymore, Molly is really concerned about John.

Of course, nothing ever happens to him. Patients are a little bit more fidgety than everywhere else, and the stab cut are little bit more regular, but he sees as many polite kids, hurried mothers, and tired men. It's like everywhere else, and to stitch a wound on a skin tanned by the Maldives sun, or whitened by magnesium deficiency, is _exactly _the same thing.

So he goes over there, every day, for a few hours or a long night, and he listens, heals, bandages, cleans, and walks home in the middle of the night. He didn't say a word when Molly asked him if he was doing this on purpose because, "It looks like you're waiting for something to happen to you, John."

* * *

John opens his eyes and it's been five months since they buried Him. He hadn't drank a beer with Greg since Manchester got to quarter-finals, and the DI seems to be very pissed about it. It's every two days now that the older man sends him a text. Sometimes it's just question marks, and when it happens the doctor understands he didn't reply to the previous one. When he looks at their conversation, he only sees grey speech bubbles, there weren't any green ones since so long ago that he can't find even one.

At first, they were seeing each other, because John was still able to talk, and still, he needed his voice to tell him that _yes_ everything was okay and _yes_ Greg could help him. It was just a way to not say goodbye to the past already. He just needed Lestrade to talk to him about his current cases. He told him he could contact him if he needed a doctor, even on a crime scene. John really meant _especially on a crime scene_.

Lestrade said yes, pity drowning his brown pupils and it was all the soldier needed. So, every now and then, a call from the police officer took a few hours of his time. There even was the Linda Palmer murder case in June, when Greg overworked and without any coroner available called his friend. But when Scotland Yard learnt one of the inspectors called in a nobody, he nearly got fired. They accepted the consultant detective narrowly; his subordinate wasn't worth a penny.

Since then, Greg has literally no interest and John doesn't have the strength anymore to tighten his fingers around a pint and to insult the referee's mother. So he doesn't answer, he doesn't erase the texts, either, because he forgets them as soon as he reads them. He didn't answer to the text saying "You're cutting yourself off from everyone, John."

* * *

John inspires, expires, and opens his eyes. It's been eight months since He died. He won't go to work today. He didn't go yesterday either. Not even the week before. It must be said that he got fired a month ago. He promised Mrs. Hudson he'd eat with her today; it's the only thing that gets him off the bed. For all the times she left a meal on a tray on the higher step of the stairs, he's willing to do this for her. It's noon, anyway, he'd better get dressed.

Seated in the kitchen, not quite sure if Thursday was yesterday or the day before, he hears his landlady's whirring voice. She must be speaking about Mrs. Jenssen for sure, like every other time. Unless she's speaking about this new hairdresser. He lifts his hand by reflex when she gives him his plate and lands it on his side. He's not hungry anyway. She's humming she's going to wash her hands and this time, he scowls. He succeeded in developing a technic to not listen to her anymore, to just hear, but if she's humming, the magic disappears and her words are clear. He _doesn't_ want to listen.

"I'm going to ask my cleaning lady, Lucy, to come here, John. If your bathroom isn't cleaned very, very soon, I'm keeping your deposit check!'' she shouts from the other side of the hallway. "Do you have any clean towels?"

How could he possibly know that?

"I took the soap in the shower as there wasn't any more left."

How could he possibly give a damn?

"John, where's the mirror?"

He opens his eyes and his breathing goes dead. He doesn't want to answer to this.

"There's still some clean towels in the cupboard on your right, and it's okay for the soap, I have to buy some anyway." His voice is dark as thunder, but he just doesn't want to answer to _this_.

He hears the muffled-by-cosy-slipper-steps discovering the flat, room by room, before she comes back. He fixes the ground with a look. He wants to nail his eyes on the wooden floor and to never have to face another gaze again.

"There are no more mirrors here." The report is as painful to say as to hear. "Since when did you see yourself?"

He laughs, bitterly; He died eight month ago and Mrs. Hudson asks him since when did he see himself. What for? To see himself skinny as a sick dog, with dreadful dark rings under his eyes, pale to death? Nothing has been right since eight months ago, and to see the concrete proof on his tired body won't help him for all that, so yes, all the mirrors ended up in the basement. He doesn't need a reflection to prove to him there's no one by his side anymore.

His landlady sits next to him, takes his hand in her own, and without knowing it, this time, he actually looks at her.

"Stop trying to join Him, John."

* * *

John opens his eyes and gets up. He thought about it all night long, since the sentence Mrs. Hudson said yesterday. Six words, she only used six words, and his brain worked and worked in a loop. Today, he's hungry. He's thirsty. His knees are hurting by dint of using them. And he's determined.

He chooses the red jumper, the one his sister gave him for Christmas, because he likes this jumper and he feels good in it. It's cold outside, he knows it and he doesn't want to catch a cold. He goes down the stairs resolutely and hears again with a new pleasure the sound of his steps banging the wood. He'll go to St. Bart's once he's swallowed a good breakfast, and if he doesn't find anything satisfying enough in his kitchen, he'll go to the café around the corner. He'll go there and order a big chocolate muffin and an Espresso. Because today, he knows it.

Sherlock Holmes is alive and John Watson will prove it, no matter the cost.

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	2. Molly Hooper

When Molly Hooper leaves her flat on Trinity Street, she stops two times on the stairs before turning back to check if she really closed the door. Mrs. Chasemore on the third floor had a burglar visit one week ago and since the young coroner always has this irrational fear she turned the key without locking it, as though in thin air.

Of course, it's not, like every time, and she feels slightly silly to have come back. Whittie must be having a laugh at herself, but as Whittie is a cat, it's not a big deal.

She likes her street, calm and very close to Borough. Plus, the flat is brighter than the old one. She likes the _Ruse_ too, only a few meters away from her place, but her friends all seem drowned under work lately, so goodbye to the usual Friday night pint between good laughs and gossip.

She passes her Oyster card over the automatic machine and dives into the long hallways, comes down never-ending stairs, and climbs others before she reaches her platform. On her right, she sees a man shouting into the little microphone of an earphone and she thinks about Stephen. He always does that, furrowed eyebrows and tightened hand around the mic to get it as close as possible to his mouth. It's quite ridiculous, actually, but he once confessed in a funny face it made him think he was a businessman. So she lets him do it and smiles. She hasn't called him for five days now, and even if it was just an occasional shag at first, now she knows she'd like to see him again. He's tall, way too tall for her, of course, but he knows how to listen, and Molly likes it. She even says to herself that bringing back home a publisher for Christmas could be a good idea. She smiles before pinching her lips (because nobody likes to see someone smile in the subway for no reason; it's as scary as a forgotten bag), and knows it: tonight, she'll call him to offer him a drink.

When she arrives at St. Bart's, she bumps into the usual ambulance driver batch, who this time are much noisier - apparently, London won yesterday. She greets them, lies easily by telling them that _yes_ she saw the match and _yes_ the goalkeeper sucked so very hard, and goes to the fifth floor where she quickly changes her clothes. She could leave her flat with a first prize jumper from Pimark and shapeless blue jeans because she puts on a white coat when she arrives anyway, but she likes to take care of herself. Changing her clothes gives her the impression she has several lives, or her day is extensible, and given the fact she spends 25 hours per day in the lab, it's kind of enjoyable. She looks at herself in the little mirror attached to her metal locker's door and ties her hair in a high ponytail. Long hair definitely looks good on her, but it's really not practical when you spend your life bent over an open dead body.

Ready, she leaves the locker room, hums the John Legend song she heard in the entrance, and goes down the hallway to her laboratory. She screams so hard when she sees John seated on a stool, he drops the newspaper he was reading.

"Sorry, Molly. If I knew I would scare you this much, I would have placed a sign on the door!"

"No, that's okay, sorry... What are you doing here?" she asks with a nervous smile.

They lean at the same time to get back the paper and smile, knees on the floor.

"I told myself I could come to see you."

Molly smiles, because the last time John came to visit her, they hadn't celebrated New Year's Eve and Baby George was still an optimistic pipedream of a royal-gossip-needing nation. They get back to their feet before she asks:

"Do you want coffee?"

John forgot how bad the St. Bart coffee was. He pulls a face and his friend laughs. It's so surrealistic to see him here that tender hysteria overruns her. He thinks it's terribly touching and he finally realises how much he missed this, _her_. They see old acquaintances and new faces John greets with his own. He asks a lot of questions of Molly because the truth is he feels terribly ashamed of not asking about her before. At the same time, he had absolutely nothing to tell her, and he does really understand this now. When she says:

"I went to Barcelona for two weeks, last September, it was beautiful! And that Sagrada Familia, it's quite something, right?"

He realises in eight months he didn't even cross the Thames. When she says:

"I moved, you know. The cracks on the previous flat were getting bigger, so I took the estate agency's offer."

He realises he promised to help her pack her stuff, but he never called her again. When she says:

"I met someone. A friend's friend; we met at a party. He's very nice."

He realises he hasn't had any friends since a long time ago. As for meetings-_and-more-if-things-work-well_, he prefers to not even think about it.

He sighs and inspires by straightening up his chest but by lowering his gaze, because he's not proud, not at all, and the mere idea of missing all of this -_life_- for eight months makes him nauseous. Or maybe it's the coffee. He puts the plastic glass next to him on Molly's desk.

"I'm happy to see you. Really."

"I'm sorry." And saying it frees him from a burden so heavy he feels like he's breathing for the first time in months.

She catches his hand and forces him to lay it on the desk before she interlaces their fingers. It's a gesture they should have had at the morgue eight months ago, and yet, it doesn't seem too late. It feels quite nice, actually.

"Don't ever apologise again. And come with me to Greg's birthday this Saturday night."

"You're still seeing each other?" he asks with a discreet smile, having already conquered the idea of not talking about those months of radio silence.

"From time to time. He's nice."

The doctor smiles and releases the fragile hand that's been stronger than his. He's not a chatty man, so they leave it there. Good, he had other plans.

"Tell me, Molly, I was thinking: How did you meet Sherlock?"

"Oh, it was maybe five... six years ago maybe? I was still doing an internship here. I was with my referee, Mr. Ferry, and we were on a case of... I don't even remember. In short, Gregory came by -he was a good friend of my mentor- with Sherlock. The three of them talked before Ferry let them look at the body we were doing an autopsy on. Oh yes, I remember! We thought it was a murder, and Sherlock bent over, very close to the body. At first I thought he was a relative, but he had so much... _confidence_ to just scrutinise it like that, it just... truly shocked me. By the end, he just got up claiming '_Suicide!'_ before turning around to leave. It was so theatrical, I thought it was a candid camera, you know."

John laughs heartily to the memory's evocation; this is something he can easily picture. Many times he understood Sherlock needs to make a spectacle of himself, like any other actor in Covent Garden...

"I laughed despite myself. So he turned around again, and for the first time, I actually saw his face. He was different back then, you know, he was... thinner. He kind of scared me too. He started to look at me and I felt, like... assaulted. Just by his gaze; it's silly, I know."

"It's not silly, Molly, it's exactly the way he acts."

"However, Gregory took part and said 'No, not her.' I really thought he was going to insult me or even hit me, and then, with time, I understood his _little particularity_ was to describe exactly the person aimed at, rather than raising a hand..." she hums with a melancholic smile.

John smiles back and looks at the long fingers tapping the wooden desk. He always liked the woman because he never saw someone as patient as her (and to be able to affront Sherlock six years without batting an eyelid, it's really a prowess worthy of the Guinness Book). Basically, even if Sherlock acted stupid more than once. The soldier knows he likes the coroner too, and not only because of her kindness. There's something precious about her, and even the sociopath saw that.

He finishes his drink quickly and is absorbed by his thoughts for a few seconds. They need it, also: silence, just a little, because after six months without giving any news, everything's not coming back as it was before. He repeats in his head the conversation they just had and realizes he can't talk about Sherlock in the past tense. It's fairly normal, because he _knows_.

"John, I wanted to tell you... I'm sorry too."

"What for?"

He frowns by lifting his nose up.

"I wasn't very nice to you. I have been... jealous."

"_Jealous_?"

He spells out the word with a particular attention because he really doesn't understand it.

"You knew him for, what... ten minutes? And he proposed for you to move in. In six years of friendsh-... of knowing each other, he never offered me coffee."

"You can't compare, Molly, it's... particular, he..."

"He never saw me as a friend, I know. It took him three years to remember my name. But, that's how he was..."

_That's how he __is_, mentally corrects the doctor.

"I forgave him... Since the fall."

Her eyes flee from the soldier's gaze and this time he knows it's the right moment to talk about the reason that got him off Baker Street.

Because something's not right about this. It's been eight months, and for God's sake, _something's not right_. He saw him jump from this damn roof, he saw him laid down on this damn pavement, he saw that damn blood invade his shoes and he saw those damn closed eyes. The rest is quite blurry, everything went too fast (you can't leave a dead body on the street, certainly): he saw him slipped onto a stretcher, he followed him from afar in the corridors, fell two times on his knees. He, however, remembers he saw Molly that day, running from one room to another, before coming back to him to take him in her arms, and to squeeze and squeeze again. At least he remembers this: Molly never said anything to him. She just used her body as a rampart to prevent him to go any further, to face up the unbearable, and so he concluded it was over. But he didn't even see the autopsy report.

"I wanted to talk to you about something, Molly."

"Sure, what is it?"

She takes a biscuits' package from the right drawer of her desk and leans over it to him; he takes one with an undeniable pleasure.

"You're the one who did the autopsy on Sherlock, right?"

This time the package goes backward and John sees the little chocolate chips going away -it breaks his heart. He raises his head and sees Molly's darker gaze. She coughs a little, lifts up on her stool and puts back the biscuits in the drawer. _Fuck_.

"No... I saw it; I declared the death, but... I couldn't do the autopsy."

John folds his arms, lifts up his chest by reflex, eyebrows furrowed. The doctor inside him fades away to give way to the soldier.

"I was certain it was you."

"John, no, I never could have..."

It still takes him a few seconds to understand that Molly really couldn't have done it, despite her irreproachable professionalism. It bothers him because it complicates everything.

"I see. Who did it then?"

"Well, Jef did."

She looks at him with a self-confidence so big he's not sure the words _Are you stupid?_ don't burn the lipstick-covered mouth.

"Jef?"

"Jef Dhinnom, you met him several times, right? He replaced Mark Braly during his sick leave."

John rummages through his eight-month-asleep memory, but still, nothing comes back to him. He shakes his head "no" and she gets up to turn on her computer. Over her shoulder, he sees her opening files, entering some passwords of which he only detects the asterisks, and writing in a little window the name _Sherlock Holmes_. The little rainbow wheel turns and turns, making him feel dizzy, because if the computer doesn't find any file, then he'll have his first proof. But the Apple God doesn't listen to him and makes the computer goes _ting_ in the quiet room before a file opens up.

"Do you want to read it?" asks Molly.

He nods in agreement and she presses the print button. It's not something she's conformable with, and John can easily see it. _Of course, it's embarrassing to hide that his best friend, the detective he's been crying about since eight months ago, in fact never went to the morgue_, he thinks so loud his head hurts.

The paper printed, she turns around and gives it to him. There's the date that he firstly checks (an error could happen so quickly), then he reads it all:

_"I undersigned, Doctor JEF DHINNOM, locus of head of Legal Medicine department Mark Braly; certify to have proceed on this day, in virtue of the requisition mentioned above; to the forensic examination (and the autopsy) of the body of miss/madam/mister;_

_SHERLOCK HOLMES_

_The forensic examination (and the autopsy) of the body highlighted:_

_-a periorbital bilateral bruise_

_-a body covered in blood_

_-a fractured skull located on the occipital area with complex crashed bones_

_-traces of medical reanimation"_

It must hurt him, beyond words, to read those ones, but everything seems so fake he puts back the paper on the desk, a fixed grin's shade hiding on the corner of his lips.

"Okay, so, this... Dhinnom; what can you tell me about him?"

"He stayed here until September, I think. You know, between coroners from here who knew Sherlock way too well to be able to touch his body, to those who hated him way too much to respect it, asking for someone new's help was the best idea."

"Do you know where he is now?"

"No idea... I'm not even sure he's still in London."

"What a coincidence..."

He stayed calm as long as possible, but the ironic laugh that escapes from his lips make Molly understand something's not totally normal.

"Why all those questions?"

"Because I figured it out, Molly."

He gets up, puts his hand on the desk, crushes the shamed autopsy report and comes next to her. This time, she shivers and stands back slightly. He starts again, his gaze attached to the scared one in front of him:

"Sherlock is alive."

Three words and the coroner's face whitens and turns over with disgust.

"What...?"

"Oh for God's sake, stop acting so stupid and tell me where he is!" he screams, his fist violently banging the desk that jumps under the assault.

The soldier barely used his voice those last few months, it's still a bit husky. His face suddenly withdrawn, his expression gets harder and this time Molly is really afraid of him. She moves a few steps away from this disturbing proximity and leans on the wall in the back, arms folded against her chest in a protected position that hurts John.

"I'm sorry, Molly, I didn't mean to scare you... once again."

"Are you implying that I... what... _hid_ Sherlock's survival?"

"He's _not _dead."

"He _is_ dead! He broke his skull, he got himself on _this_ table, with _his_ blood emptying on _this_ ground! I took his wrist in my hand and I pressed and pressed again, and nothing, John, _nothing_! He jumped off that bloody roof, he killed himself in front of you, in front of all of us! For Christ's sake, what's wrong with you?!" she finally screams, and even if the words are burning John's soul, he understands it's the first time she expresses them.

She noisily inspires, turns away her face she's hiding with a shivering hand, and John steps back. Everything is still too blurry for him to be certain of even the tiniest detail. Sherlock would be so ashamed just by looking at him being this bad during an interrogation, so he takes advantage of the fact Molly's still hiding her crying eyes to take the report he folds before sliding it into his inner pocket.

"Sorry for the trouble, Molly."

He buttons up his jacket before walking by the exit. He hears her sitting back on the stool and slows down his steps by the autopsy table she pointed at with her shaking forefinger.

"What should I say to Lestrade? Will you come with me to his birthday?"

Her voice is still shivering, but her nonstandard patience, once again, apologizes for the violent attitude of one of her friends way too quickly.

"Yeah... I'll be glad to go with you. But I'll tell him myself. Thank you, Molly."

Discreetly, he puts his hand on the cold metal and presses his fingers. Sherlock never put his head here, he can feel it. He greets the young woman and disappears in the corridor decal maze.

_For God's sake, Sherlock, how do you understand if someone is lying, just by looking at his fingernails? Shit, her nails, I didn't even look at them. And I didn't even ask more questions about this Dhinnom. I'm rusty... Thank God, Sherlock, you're not here to see this. But it's only a matter of time, right, because I'm going to find you, and I'll kick your arse so hard you'll even regret being born... and dead._

John inspires the polluted air once he reaches the walkway, and must prevent himself from slapping his face. _Talking to fictive Sherlock is kind of scary, it'd be better if I'd not do it again_. He'll talk to him for real when he finds him.

He pulls up his collar and thinks about the shortest way to get to Scotland Yard.


	3. Gregory Lestrade

Note: Hello! Here's chapter 3, with the sexiest cop in Londong: Mr. Gregory Lestrade. Also, Scott Roller's story is inspired by Christopher Roller's story.  
Beta: Still the perfect **PJTL156**!  
Reviews: well, yes of course! I'd love to have your feedbacks. Meanwhile, enjoy your reading dears.

* * *

Even if Gregory Lestrade had found a dead rat in his coffee, the day would have been better.

He swears to himself he's going to take his hands off his face in a few seconds, but for now, keeping his eyes closed and noisily breathing is extremely relaxing - maybe it has something to do with yoga, karma, or some shit.

"Okay, keep going."

He straightens up in one go, puts both of his hands on his covered-in-files-due-to-yesterday desk and raises his ringed face to the plaintiff someone brought him. Goodness, how he's pissed off after the ministry; with their budgetary restrictions, they're now obligated to bring their own coffee and to split in twelve the fifty or so complainants, victims and culprits per day. Presently in front of him is Scott Roller; 36 years old; crazed eyes and scars on his right eyebrow; brown, mid-long hair; white jacket and espadrilles.

"So you'd like to press charges against David Copperfield, because...?"

"Because I'd like him to reveal his secrets. You see, I'm God and his magic tricks defy the law of gravity that I invented. I know I didn't register a patent on my divine powers yet -the papers are ongoing- but in a way, he's stealing from me, and this is intolerable."

A dead rat and a blow on his neck would be lovely.

"And..." Greg coughs for a long time, long enough to swallow words like Holy hell, who brought me this freak? at the back of his throat, and straightens up before folding his arms against his chest, his feet finding a comfortable place on the desk he's not unable to stand the sight of. "Do you have a lawyer?"

"Ah, yes, of course! My mistake, I should have introduced him to you sooner."

Scott-Roller, God-Freak-Number-One, stretches out, opens his bag and straightens up, all smile and teeth, before putting atop one of Greg's files a white dove whose lifeless head gently hits his signature. Maybe it's a divine sign.

"He's quite shy; he hasn't spoken for five days... Are you okay, my Son? You're quite quiet too. Do you want me to turn your coffee into wine? It'll only take me thirty seconds, you know."

Greg gets up, the vision of this poor dead dove on his papers and the mere presence of the nutcase pissing him off beyond words and takes him to a drunk tank, before asking him very gently to wait there. One phone call to the Bethlem Royal Hospital later, he goes back to his office. This time, the man seated on the green chair truly makes him smile.

"John?"

"Hi Greg, Donovan told me I could come in; is that okay...?"

He quickly nods his head, comes near the doctor who got up to offer him his hand and doesn't even bother to look at this way too unfriendly gesture -he takes him in his arms, squeezes hard, gives him the three regulatory grownup taps on his back and lets him go.

"How are you?"

He goes around his desk he's trying to clean up a little (before, the file piles were just a way to hide from the plaintiffs, but for once it doesn't bother him to see the face of the man in front of him) and sit, elbows on the table, a candid smile on his lips.

"Well... I'm okay," smiles John while massaging his thighs with his moist hands.

"You look like shit, you know that?"

The doctor raises his head and holds his right cheek muscle in a smile that's not really one -the Watson way to say _Fuck off_. Molly was polite, as always, she didn't say out loud what he refuses to hear, but apparently Greg is not playing in the same league.

"You lost, what, twenty pounds?"

"Weightwatchers diet."

"Or depression."

"It's cheaper."

"Of course."

They look at each other, not displeased to meet again for a spar in which they're still at ease despite all the time spent separated, and suddenly the older man's fist fiercely crashes against the wooden desk.

"Oh, come on, John. Five months! Five months I've had no news about you! Do you know how many times I had to phone Mrs. Hudson to check if you were still alive? Do you know how many times I freaked out in my chair when I heard a guy jumped in front of a train at St. Pancras?"

"Sorry, Greg, I-"

"No, you shut up and you listen to me," obliged the cop with a threatening finger pointing at the blond man. "_This_, this is not the John Watson I know. The one I know is a soldier, a fighter, and you'll give me the honor to become that guy, pronto, because if you think, even for a second that I'll let you go back to hide in Baker Street, let me tell you that I'll come to your bloody flat and I'll feed you broccoli day and night. And believe me; my girlfriend won't be pleased to see me leave the house!"

"You have a girlfriend..?" timidly asks John, raising his eyes, the shade of a smile pinching his lips.

"Yes, but that's not the point of this conversation!" screams the DI.

They look at each other and seem to breath for the first time before their muscles soothe and they let themselves slip into their chairs - of course, it's more pleasant for Lestrade who has a leathered armchair.

"Anyway, I'm glad to see you..."

"Me too, Greg."

"So, why did you leave Baker Street?"

* * *

John inspires and folds his arms against his chest. Here they are and the soldier must not screw this up because Lestrade could really be useful. He repeats in his head once again the little speech he prepared on his way to Scotland Yard and finally drops the bomb:

"I want to exhume Sherlock's body."

"... I beg your pardon?"

It's a disgusted face that answers the blond who raises his hands to catch his friend's attention and continues:

"I have reasons to believe that... he's not quite dead."

"What do you mean 'not quite dead'? For Christ's sake, John, stop watching _The Walking Dead_, you're becoming weird!"

"I'm serious. I really thought about it and... I just learned Molly Hooper didn't do the autopsy, it was a guy named Jef Dhinnom. Have you ever met him? »

"No." The answer is quite clear.

"Have you seen Sherlock dead?"

"No. But John, do you have any proof of what you're suggesting?"

This time, it's the doctor's turn to answer negatively:

"No, but... it's just so weird. Sherlock would never kill himself. This honor thing, he didn't care a bit. Maybe it would have been a break for his career at first, but in the end he knew he'd be okay."

"John..." gently calls Lestrade, leaning into him, his hands joined and his thumbs nonchalantly fighting. "I took your deposition; you told me you saw Sherlock jump."

"I know but... I was far away."

"For Christ's s..."

"Maybe I saw it wrong." continues the shrugging soldier, his voice quick and shivering because if Greg refuses this, he'll have no idea what to do next. "Maybe it was someone else or a fake jump... He could have never done this."

John Watson has some pride (the kind of pride you teach a young boy because he's a male, and you teach to a soldier because he must shoot before he gets shot at), but today he stifles it, he buries it deep down his entrails and forgets it. He'll beg his friend if he has to, he'll get on his knees, here on the dirty linoleum, because he needs his help to prove his claims.

"You want us to open the coffin and to do some genetic tests?"

"Exactly."

"I can't do that without any proof, John, that's the law."

"... Okay, fine, I'll have to... I'll have to find Jef Dhinnom to show him a picture of Sherlock to ask him if he's really sure it's his body he did the autopsy on."

"And if he has any doubts," continues Lestrade, nodding his head, "it'll be enough for me to ask the Prosecutor's Department to exhume the body."

This time John breathes a little more, like when he asked Molly to forgive him. It's funny, but since he left Baker Street, he feels the consequences of his last imprisoned months. He lost weight of course; he could have never left the flat without a belt. All his back is tensed, like he slept for weeks on a rocky ground. Every articulation hurts, his head spins if he doesn't eat a biscuit every few hours.

"Thanks Greg... and... would you happen to have a picture of Sherlock?"

It's silly, but it's a problem he didn't think he'd face one day. John is not the kind of man to publish on Facebook his lunch pictures, selfies or pictures of his friends. He's more like the kind of man who disappears in the basement to pick up a bottle of wine when someone wants to take a family picture next to the Christmas tree. The only remaining pictures of the detective in Baker Street are the ones from the magazines, when he hid himself under that stupid hat - and for sure, they won't help John. He looks at Lestrade smiling at him and automatically looks at his computer. After several minutes, he turns the screen to show him a gallery made of Sherlock's pictures. There are ten of them: some clipping, photos that seem to be coming from the secret service (incredibly clear) and some in black and white, took in front of a dirty wall where a young and skinny Sherlock holds a sign with his name and some numbers on it.

"How old was he...?"

"Twenty years old, sharp."

"You arrested him on his twentieth birthday?"

"He was two streets down on the backseat of a stolen car with a needle in his arm. I could have brought him a cake but oddly I thought taking him to a cell would be more appropriate."

John faintly smiles and leans a little more to find which picture would be more usable. Without looking at his older friend, he asks:

"That's how you met him?"

"Yep, on a round."

"He stole the car?"

"No, he had found it. Apparently, back then he was calling the police station to tell everyone he wanted them to give him some cases, but of course no one took it seriously. He decided to stay in the car until someone would find him, and as he was getting bored..."

"It was his first time?"

"To shoot up? Oh God no, just by looking at his body you could tell it was recurrent... Anyway, I took him back to the police station, I waited 'til he got better and we started to talk."

"Did he give you his _Best Show_?" asks John with a mischievous smile.

"Not quite... back then he was very different. Untenable. Drop-dead pedantic."

"Wait, more than right now? I don't know if that's possible."

"Oh yes, it's possible. I've given two slaps in my life and both of them landed on Sir Sherlock Holmes' cheek. This night, he got his first. He needed this, you know."

John smiles just by thinking about Lestrade slapping a hellish Sherlock and nods to make him continue his story.

"He told me he could help me resolve a robbery case that was really getting on my nerves back then; I said yes because I took pity on him. It was the same night, it was maybe 4 in the morning and he started to talk and talk; it was as if his brain was assaulted by thousands of bits of information and he couldn't put them in order before telling them. A real mess, trust me. Some sentences weren't even coherent; however, I was able to understand a few ideas and... he was right, that moron. At 7 A.M we found the name of the culprit and I sent a team to arrest him. I promised Sherlock I'd never let him down -with a gift like this, he could have been a captain!– but before all, he had to go to rehab. I called the hospital, but in the end it's not an ambulance that came, but a limo."

"Christ."

"Yep. First night, first meeting with both of the Holmes brothers."

"I know that feeling. Did he offer you money to spy on him?"

"Yes. And I accepted."

"What ?!" shouts the doctor.

"I was 34 years old, John; there was a member of the government ready to help me move up through the lower ranks in a flash if I was taking care of a lost kid. I don't see why I should have refused. Anyway, we agreed to put Sherlock in rehab and I went to see him every day until he came out."

"So you've know each other for... what... 14 years? »

"Not exactly. He stayed one year in rehab and once he was over it, he disappeared. He asked me to not come after him; he said he'd come back eventually and I respected his decision. Six years after, I received a phone call from him, he'd just found a flat on Baker Street and needed to know how to put the power back on after a short-circuit."

"What did he do for six years then...?"

"I have no idea. You know, I could have forgotten him, changed my number or even moved out of the city, but he called anyway. Forty minutes after I was in Baker Street to show him where the fuses were. He became... a man. I was so curious to ask him where he was all those years but I didn't even know how to start the conversation! Finally he broke the silence by deciphering out loud precisely everything that I'd become. I was back in front of the kid in the stolen car, with the same mind, but this time... everything was perfectly clear. It was scarring and awesome at the same time. Therefore, his insults were much more precise and stinging - he took the second slap. At the end of the day, I told him I wanted him to join the police force, but he didn't want to. He was willing to help me only under the condition that he'd be a _Consultant Detective_ and nothing more. I didn't refuse. I could never have."

John looks at his friend for a long time, drinking his words. What happened in Sherlock's life before their encounter is still a mystery as big as the Area 51 zone, and listening to Greg talking about it stimulates him without knowing why.

"I think this photo will be perfect," continues the cop by pressing his finger on a picture of Sherlock, quite recent. The detective is looking to his left; despite the luminosity you can see the color of those damn cat eyes. He wears the coat in which he jumped and John knows it'll be perfect to show to Dhinnom. There's only one Sherlock Holmes in this world and it's impossible to forget you did an autopsy on a guy like that.

"Where do you have all those pictures from?"

"Who needed to keep an eye on him, constantly?"

"Mycroft never really let him go, right?"

Lestrade smiles, raises an eyebrow in a universal face who means _What do you think? _and prints the photo he gives to his friend.

"So he never went to see him when he was in rehab then?"

"Not a single time. Sherlock didn't want to talk about it but I frequently asked the nurses. I was the only one to pay him a visit."

John lowers his gaze and caresses with his thumb the paper still a bit hot from the printer. He remembers this day, almost three years ago now, when he discovered the detective's junkie past. They never talked about it. John knew the addiction and all the tragedy it caused. Of course, he was himself strong enough and confident in the future to never let himself drown in a whisky bottle or in a line of cocaine; however, finding his big sister in A&E after her ethylic coma was kind of a turn-off. He'll never forget his parent's eyes the first time they ran into A&E, who were silently praying _Dear Lord, please protect my child_, before their tearing eyes slowly emptied from their anxiety, to let the mortifying give-up swallow them whole. In the Watson family, it has forever been easier to ignore than to confront. But John is tired of being a spectator; for Sherlock, he won't give up.

"Thank you, Greg. I'm going to find Dhinnom and I'll bring him back to you."

"On the condition that he has a doubt..."

"It won't be a doubt, but certitude. It's not his body he did an autopsy on."

They greet each other with their head, talk about the DI's birthday. John promises he'll go (it'll be tough, but he has to go out again eventually), and he's about to leave when Lestrade calls him back:

"Wait, John, do you want his criminal record too?"

"He has a criminal record?"

"Only filled up with what his brother didn't want to erase; like a punishment, you know. It's just about the drugs, there's his parents' address and some minor details..."

"Thanks, that could be usef-... his parent's address?"

The cop inspires and gives the file to the soldier.

"They live in Hastings."

"But I thought they were dead... we didn't even invite them to the funeral."

"I called them but... they didn't want to come. I've never met them but Sherlock always told me they were... _Special_."

John lowers his gaze and reads the file on which he discovers the names Sir Charles Holmes and Mrs. Margaret Holmes. He thanks the DI one more time, promises he'll come to this birthday and leaves Scotland Yard with the dossier under his arm.

* * *

John raises his head toward the computer on his desk. He stuffs down the cereal in his mouth and clicks on the received email. It's a Google alert, again, responding to the words _Jef Dhinnom_. It's been a month since he settled into this automatic system; he heard about it at Gregory's birthday, at Bradley's, from a DI's cousin, an IT engineer at a bank.

"It's quite simple, actually, you just have to write down the words you're looking for, for example "Kate Middleton", and when a website, a blog, or a forum talks about it, there you go; you receive an email with a direct link to it," said the thirty year old man sipping the beer he ordered.

The same night, seated at the kitchen table, only lit up by the weak light of his computer screen, John entered the words _Jef Dhinnom_ and his email address, waiting for the information which would lead him to the doctor's step. At the same time, he contacted old friends from St. Bart's who were useless, the phone book, Facebook or even LinkedIn, but nothing tangible helped him find some rest.

He takes a new spoonful of his Lucky Charms and screws up his eyes tired by his age on the email he received. The link sent him to the official Brighton's website, where in two days there'll be the National Congress of Medicine 2014. It must be a mistake; like always he's received these damn emails. He's ready to click on the little trashcan when the name of a participant brands his retina.

_Dr. Dhinnom._

One month. It took him one fucking month to read this name anywhere else than on the coroner's report Molly printed him. He inspires, puts his hands on his face and stops them in front of his nose, reads and reads again the few letters that give him all the hope that started to fade. Oh, how he understood he's not as clever as Sherlock Holmes those last few weeks. Seeing the detective on a crime scene always gave him the unconscious impression it was easy or at least feasible. Now he's alone; it's almost as if he's ready to go ask some help from Anderson because, really, he can't do this.

Now that he has at least an address –Brighton– hope comes back. He raises on his feet, closes his computer without shutting if off and goes up to his room where he puts his overnight bag. He puts in it clothes, a toiletry set and of course the blue dossier he started to put together one month ago. It's not very full for now, there's just the coroner's report, Sherlock's picture given by Lestrade and his criminal record, but it's only the beginning. With military precision, he closes the zip, puts the strap on his shoulder and goes down to knock on his landlady's door, who welcomes him with a tender smile and a dirty apron.

"So you ended up killing Mrs. Hawkney's cat, Mrs. Hudson?"

"If only... But no my boy, I'm making tomato soup!"

"I won't be able to eat with you tonight; I have to go to Brighton."

"Oh, okay... Well, be careful."

"Thanks... Could I take your car?" he asks with a charmer smile and an impish eye - _the_ technique to make her fall for it.

"Of course, dear." She goes into her living-room just to bring back her keys and the vehicle's papers she gives him.

He nods to her, ready to leave but she puts her thin hand on his forearm and calls for him.

"John, I told you I'd be patient; I know it's not easy with your situation but... You're two months late on your rent. With the payments, and my pension, I..."

"I know, I'm sorry." He dives the keys into his pocket, afraid the landlady will change her mind, inspires while raising his head to her and continues, trying to hide the anxiety in his voice. "I'll pay you when I come back from Brighton."

"There's another solution, you know."

He tilts his head and raises an eyebrow, attentive. He had no idea Mrs. Hudson could be a backstabber:

"We could find you a new flatmate."

"Mrs. Hudson..." calls with a squeezed voice the soldier whose fists clench around themselves, and he concentrates to not scream because he's tired of repeating it again and again. "Sherlock's not dead. Just let me find him."

"Oh my boy, is this why you're going to Brighton?!" she laments, putting her wrinkled hand on her forehead.

"Of course, why would I go there otherwise?"

"I thought you met a nice lady. You know, nowadays with the Internet, meeting people is easier, so I thought you were going to meet her."

John gulps, grits his teeth one second too much, until he hurts himself, nods at her again and leaves the hallway with a quickened pace. He goes to the car, switches it on after he throws the bag on his right and hurtles off, making the tires squeal on the pavement.

Meet a nice lady? As if John wanted to do so. Even more, as if he had the strength! He crushes the accelerator, ignores the orange light, follows drivers as in a hurry as he is to get to their destination; but of course, it's beyond compare. They just want to go to their council estate houses, with their lovely wives cooking and their children doing their homework, their Labrador running after a ball. He doesn't want any of this; he just wants to find Sherlock. Because that's his life now: seeking and undeniably finding. So, no, he doesn't have the time to smile at the young lady seated in front of him in the subway because he asks himself how he could get to the recording of the Underground surveillance cameras. He doesn't ask, either, the name of the red-head in the newsagent shop down the road when he go gets his paper, because he asks himself if Sherlock is still buying patches and if so, it means he's hiding in a city. That's how it is, and that's okay.

The white signs show him the highway he's getting closer to, and suddenly he breathes. One long and deep sigh. The narrow streets and the way too big buildings disappear, he only sees now the horizontality of things and somehow, hope strikes him again. It's not a wall he sees every time he turns his head, it's the horizon, the infinity, the promise that the detective is hiding over there. He slows down, finally attaches his seatbelt and turns on the radio. He hates this song, but at least it's an intangible presence; he won't complain.

* * *

He's driving for an hour and a half when his leg starts to shiver. It's a motorway rest area that tempts him but as soon as he sees the sign "Exit for Hastings - 5 miles", his soldier soul shuts the pain up. He dives his hand into the bag at his left and takes out the blue file. The name strikes him (how could he even forget?); it's the city where Mrs. & Mr. Holmes live. He remembers Lestrade's voice, and the way he described them as so special, remembers how Sherlock told him that... no, he remembers nothing because Sherlock _never_ talked about his parents (and to be honest, knowing the Big Brother is painful enough).

Still five miles to make his mind; he could go and ask for their help...

Still four miles; maybe they're worse than Mycroft and they'd be more willing to free the dogs instead of welcoming him in their manor...

Still three miles; maybe they could tell him where their son is...

Still two miles; maybe they're the ones who pushed him off the roof...

Still one mile; maybe Sherlock is with them.

He sees the sign, puts on the indicator and rushes onto the new road with the awful impression he jumped in emptiness. Come what may.


	4. Charles & Margaret Holmes

Without a GPS, finding Helens Down Street was an assault course. John had to ask help from two old ladies to a group of punks who were nicer than their elders. He even had to stop at a barber shop for one last bit of help. He drove along a sloping street for a long time, inspecting every number to find 108, with the awful impression he was way off the mark.

He ended up finding the house whose address was written on the file he's holding in his right hand. He stopped the motor but he can't believe it. He's in a freaking suburb. The letterbox was painted with vivid colors, the gardens were better looking than his beard and the cars all had a baby seat in the back. Sherlock couldn't have grown up _here_.

He leaves his vehicle, doesn't lock it considering the surrounding calm, and gets closer to number 108. He takes a close look at the house: the two floors, the red brick so characteristic of the South and the small garden in front of him. The yellow roses burn his retinas. Suddenly, the white door opens and out comes an old lady, grey hair cut above her shoulders, golden earrings, and pink psychedelic top. He goes down a few steps and gets closer to the garage door where she threw a bin bag in the green recycling skip. She just has to turn around to note the dismayed look on the soldier's face.

"...Can I help you?"

He got it wrong, royally. He shouldn't have come here; Sherlock's parents moved years ago, as demonstrated by the atmosphere that was way too... _normal_.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to bother you. I was looking for Mr. & Mrs. Holmes."

The woman blinks, smiles, creating this little dimple on her left cheek John already saw somewhere. _Oh. My. God_.

"I am Margaret Holmes. And you are...?"

John's mouth seems to have trouble closing itself and his mind is as filled as a chocolate box after you gave it to a bulimic.

"...John Watson."

"John!" she exclaims, raising her hands to the sky. "Come, come please, I just baked cookies." She nods for him to follow her and rushes into the house.

The soldier moves along reluctantly and can't believe it: Sherlock really lived in _this_ house, which is guarded by a _garden gnome_.

* * *

Seated at a table covered with a white napkin with floral patterns, John tightens up his fingers around the porcelain mug to burn himself a little more; if it can help him to wake up from this weird dream... He raises his head and inspects the kitchen where Mrs. Holmes brought him. He looks at the vegetables she bought at the market, as shown by the paper bag, the drying clean dishes on the draining board and the notes and pictures hung on the fridge by magnets you get as free gifts in frozen food packages.

"Another biscuit, John?"

"No, thanks."

"_Ah ah ah!_ You're all just skin and bones. Go on and eat, my boy."

Without any warning, she takes a fistful of cookies and imposes them on his empty plate. John can't stop thinking about Mrs. Hudson.

He looks at the smoke coming out of the still-hot chocolate biscuits and raises his nose toward the lady who's sitting in front of him. She smiles to him, a tender smile people keep for people of their own family, and drinks her tea silently.

"It's... surrealistic," he drops suddenly.

"What is, my boy?"

"To find you here," he says.

"And why is that?"

"I didn't think you'd be..." Normal? Alive? _Human?_ "... still here. I thought you moved."

Mrs. Holmes slightly laughs and covers her still-wet-by-tea mouth with a napkin.

"And why would we have moved? It's the house where our children grew up, we're fine here..."

"Mr. Holmes is here too?"

"Of course; he's in the garage trying to fix the damn dishwasher. I told him, _Charles we should buy a new one, the Smiths went to Ikea and bought a great one, I don't see why you persist on repairing that old-fashioned thing_. And you know what he said? _Margaret! I won't be conned by a lazy machine, I'll show it who's the boss here!_"

She laughs and John does too, because she imitated him with a deep voice, and because everything, _everything_ here blows him away. They barely finish laughing when a tall man enters by the backdoor. Red cardigan and plaid shirt, the man puts a weakened-by-time hand in his grey hairs and barely grumbles:

"Margaret, this dishwasher has no manners."

"Did it cause you trouble, darling?"

"It drained on my foot."

"Have a seat, poor soldier!" she laughs in concert with her husband before she rises to her feet to serve him a cuppa.

The old man turns his head and his blue, piercing eyes are so bright they hurt John; they're way too familiar. The doctor smiles, because it's what is stopping him from crying, and presents his hand to shake his host's.

"Charles Holmes, nice to meet you."

"John Watson."

"Oh..." His eyes open frankly, from surprise first, before they conceal in a sad melancholy.

"So... you know me," finds out John, rubbing his hands together between his legs, looking in turn at the parents.

"Sherlock barely talked about his friends, you know, so when he mentions one, we can't forget him..." smiles the lady before giving the cup to her husband, her hand resting then on his neck she slightly caresses.

John looks at both of them, scrutinises them more precisely, because he has a question that doesn't only burn his lips but also his tongue, his throat, his brain and all his soul. The words come out by themselves:

"Why didn't you come to your own son's funeral?"

The smiles in front of him vanish and the man's mouth totally reverses. He feels like he just punched the older man; he's not proud of it but he had no choice.

"Come on, John, you perfectly know why we didn't come..."

"Margaret," calls with a weak voice the man, grabbing the hand on his shoulder.

"What? He came over here, he deserves to know."

Charles sighs, closes his eyes and ducks his head but the woman smiles and faces up to John's gaze without any harm. Something is clearly not right.

"We didn't come to the funeral because Sherlock isn't dead."

This time, it's the soldier's heart that seems to reverse in his own chest. A beat less, for all the detective's ignored ones. He sits up in his chair, breathes with his mouth, then his nose, shocked, suddenly forgetting how to do so, and spreads out his fingers on the immaculate tablecloth.

"...I beg your pardon?"

He did hear everything but he needs to hear it again, from the mouth of somebody else.

"My son isn't dead, John," repeats the lady, smiling even more.

"Margaret, that's enough!" shouts Charles, suddenly rising to his feet, staring with his broken gaze at the soldier: "You- I don't know why you came here, but I'll ask you to not mention it anymore."

"Oh, come on, Charles! Leave John alone, he has nothing to do with all this!"

"He makes you believe in impossible things and I don't want you to get hurt... again!" he defends himself.

She turns around toward the younger man, shrugs, rolls her eyes, and smiles:

"He's convinced Sherlock really killed himself..."

"And she's convinced he's still alive!" screams the father whose anger is so strong it's now tears that are filling up his eyes. "I don't want to... Please just... Stop talking about it."

Margaret gets closer, caresses with a tender hand her husband's back and whispers:

"All right, darling. Go outside, get some fresh air. We'll stop talking about it."

He thanks her with a nod and leaves the kitchen by the same door he came in. John rubs his moist hands on his thighs, hardly swallows and gets ready to leave.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Holmes, I didn't want to cause you any trouble. I'll leave you..."

"No, you, you stay and sleep here tonight," she orders, pointing a finger at him. "Sherlock told us you like stuffed tomatoes?"

* * *

John spits the toothpaste in the small sink and straightens up. Of course, taking off every one of Baker Street's mirrors wasn't very hard to do, still the fact remains that the whole country didn't get those devil's tools out of the way. He confronts his reflection like the worst enemy and knows he'd get shot first on the battlefield. Lestrade was right: he looks like shit. He passes a hand on his flawed beard and promises himself he'll shave the next morning. He then palpates the rest of his face, flabby, like him. It pisses him off. He straightens up again, lifts his chin and unconsciously imitates the position he had to take when the Master Corporal made inspections at Bastion Camp. He forces himself to smile, wants to think he's good-looking for at least one second, and lowers his gaze when he understands this won't work. It takes him several seconds to gather the necessary courage to go back to his room.

Because Charles Holmes didn't let him sleep in Sherlock's, but in Mycroft's, and because everything, absolutely everything in this damn bedroom is as welcoming as a prison door. He leaves the small adjacent bathroom and puts his bare feet on the carpet - rough, of course. He looks at the beige walls, the bed with the white sheets like in the hospitals. It's simple; it's one of the only pieces of furniture in this room, with the big desk and the bookcase on his right. John realises one more time Mycroft is an intellectual, not the kind of guy to use his body. He turns around to admire the books, praying to find just a Smurfs album or even a porn magazine, anything that would prove to him the older Holmes' son is the slightest bit normal, but he only sees International Rights books and this is officially the saddest thing he ever saw.

He suffocates. Panic attack. Too much _Mycroft_ here; he needs to get out before he breaks it all. He leaves the room, takes long strides, closes the door behind him and paces up and down the hallway.

To calm himself, he thinks about the dinner, about the stuffed tomatoes better than the ones his deceased mother used to cook, and of course about the conversation. As promised, they didn't talk anymore about Sherlock; the Holmes's only asked him questions like he was doing a job interview, or worse, as if he were meeting his parents-in-law. However, they were very nice, curious without being oppressing, interested without being creepy. It made John feel good to talk about himself after forgetting his existence for a few months. What he retains especially is that his best friend's parents are cooler than his own had ever been.

He's now sick of walking round and round so he mentally slaps himself, tells himself there are worse things in the world than to sleep in Mycroft's bed (even if, presently, he can't think of a good example) and gets ready to go back to the cursed bedroom, when a door holds his attention. It looks like every other, but it's this one he wants to open. Slowly, he puts his hand on the catch and turns it without making any noise, and he has to pinch his lips until it hurts when he discovers what's hidden behind it.

It's Sherlock's bedroom and everything here calls him, like the lighthouse in the destructive ocean to which the poor godless sailor must hold on to, to not sink. He puts a foot on the soft carpet and enters. It smells like spice and black tea, the biology books are so numerous some of them are support for an improvised microscope; others are still open on the desk. There are bug dissection posters, a map of England with drawing pins on it and little cars obediently parked around a Playmobil pirate boat. And John smiles, because his parents never had the money to buy him the boat. He gets closer to the desk and inspects a small white piece of furniture where there are stocked cassette tapes labeled by hand. He leans forward and takes one aimlessly - they're all dated but he doesn't have the time to read them all. He puts it in his back pocket.

He straightens up and puts a hand on the desk which must have welcomed a young detective's elbows for hours, leaned over an enigma, and notices envelopes with his name on it. He looks at the post's stamps but sadly the letters were sent ten years ago. The address is still intriguing:

_Sherlock Holmes  
__3 Merton Street  
__Oxford_

The envelopes are empty; they still end up in the soldier's pocket.

"Do you want to sleep here?"

John jumps with surprise.

"Margaret! Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude..."

"John, you're not in a bereaved bedroom, there's nothing wrong with it. Please don't be mad at my husband. He thinks Sherlock really did kill himself."

John puts his hand on his neck, smiles because thanks to Mrs. Hudson he now has a real accomplice, but he has too many questions.

"How could you be sure your son is still alive?"

"Mothers feel that kind of thing. I carried him for nine months, he caused me a bad sciatic and permanent nausea, then sixteen years worthy of the worst roller-coaster; I would know if this rascal left Earth before me." She smiles by changing the sheets.

"Did he contact you since... the incident?"

"No. But I supposed he has good reasons to do so. I trust him. And you, John, how could you be sure my son is still alive?"

He gets closer when she gives him a pillow to help her put the slip on and forces his left cheek muscle to maintain a semblance of a smile.

"I have no idea."

Mrs. Holmes smiles, without difficulty, with a smile prettier than the stars, and sits on the bed.

"But you believe, that's what matters. You know, John, my son only had two friends in his life. And he has Mycroft, of course, but Mycroft always protected him way too much..."

She lifts her chin to the doctor and discreetly screws up her eyes freed of any make-up. He can tell she hesitates to confide something in him; he can't blame her, they've known each other since the afternoon. But her hesitation is short, as if the little voice told her the good procedure to hollow, so she starts again:

"My husband and I had difficulty to have Sherlock. There was hope and deceptions too. The doctors told me I should stop trying, that I was too old, that it was useless or that I'd end up with a disabled child. But I never gave up on faith and Charles, either. So, when Sherlock was born, it was like a godsend. For the first two weeks, I couldn't let him go; I was always lost in his beautiful eyes - the same as his dad's. Of course, after I learned to let him live his life, I didn't want to raise the kind of child always terrified behind his mother's legs! But Mycroft was never capable of letting him go... It took me some time to understand he was afraid for him. And for me. He was afraid something would happen to Sherlock and that one more time I... Anyway, he was afraid I'd be sad."

Margaret stops her story, slightly pinches her lips to detain words John imagines are as painful as razor blades that are slipping under the skin and never really leave. He swallows hard and realises his empathy next to his woman he feels like he knows for years is intensified. He takes a place next to her and smiles in his turn.

"I'm glad you never lost hope."

"Me too. John, when you find Sherlock, tell him I miss him."

"Sure."

"But I'm counting on you to not make it sound too tearful, okay?"

John bursts into laughter, because it has never been so hard to believe in something, and yet this amazing woman succeeds in being funny.

"Promise."

With her wrinkled hands, she catches the doctor's and squeezes. Her eyes don't leave the younger's ringed ones. She scrutinises him and John lets her do so, because being deciphered by a Holmes is something he hadn't felt for so long and he misses it, damn it.

Of course, Margaret's gaze is softer, John knows she can't read everything, but she can read the principal: John believes her and he'll bring her back her son, alive.

* * *

He opens his eyes and the drowsiness is so delicious, he doesn't do a thing to get off of it immediately. It's not one of those lucid dreams but it's Sherlock's bedroom, Sherlock's pillow, Sherlock's smell. He smiles before even stretching out and it hadn't happened since so long ago- back in that time when he still had a roommate keen on Bach's Toccata. Before, he complained about the high-pitched notes singing too early in the morning, now he'd sell his soul to listen to the bow caressing the cords again. He puts his hands under his neck and looks at the whole chamber; last night he didn't close the curtains to the unique pleasure to be able to admire the room where Sherlock grew up.

He looks at the green stain on the blue carpet and imagines a young Sherlock making something explode on it; he would have probably spilled some paint and would have proclaimed he crushed an alien. He looks at the key ring collection and wonders if he stole them; he would have probably gotten them from his Aunt Janine who always got him something useless from her business trip. He looks at the poster riddled with drawing pins and suspects they match with important crime scenes; he didn't go further than Liverpool in eighteen years. However, he retrieved the situation years after. Afghanistan _did_ break his habits, there's no doubt.

But he doesn't want to think about it, so he lowers his gaze and settles on his right side to look at the real important discovery: the Playmobil pirate boat. Damn it's beautiful: three sails and a proud and bloodthirsty crew, guaranteed with wooden legs and eye patches. How many times he asked for it at Christmas, and how many times he heard: "When your father's boss will give him a raise, we'll talk about it", but John never managed to answer, "Maybe if my father had the courage to _ask_ his boss for a raise, I'd have got my boat, castle and police station a long time ago." He doesn't blame his parents anyway; growing up in passiveness makes him want to taste action with his own flesh.

He wonders if, as a kid, he'd have gotten along with Sherlock. He wonders how Sherlock was as a kid. Fuck, he even wonders how _Mycroft_ was as a kid. Questions are coming back; answers are cooking, apparently, if he trusts the pancake smell around him. He gets on his feet and goes to shave.

* * *

In the kitchen he feels like he's known for years, it's not Margaret but Charles who is turning the frying pan over. John took a seat, as offered by his host. He avoids talking about his sleep to not offend him, but the older man is no sucker:

"So, you slept in Sherlock's bedroom?"

"Yes... Margaret told me it was okay."

He's served by the grey-haired man with the bereaved gaze. The doctor immediately blames himself; it's almost thanks to his survival instinct he starts a new subject:

"I wondered, how was Sherlock as a kid?"

"Oh, a real pirate! And he was the one who wanted to be called that way. But it fit him perfectly. An adventurer rock-solid, always holed up in the garden or in his shack. A real tyke, always listening through closed doors, always ahead of everything and everyone. Like Mycroft, in fact, but Sherlock never hid, unlike his brother."

John smiles and retains two pieces of information: Mycroft always was a shadowy figure and Sherlock had a shack. He _wants_ to visit his shack.

"When he grew up, however, things got complicated. Sherlock clearly was ahead of the other kids his age but unlike Mycroft, once again, he didn't have the... patience to pretend, as he said. We tried to make him change schools, to make him meet new friends, you know, but it didn't work out. He was always lost in his books or hanging around in the street; he never was reachable sociably. Luckily he was a precocious child. When he was sixteen, he went to Eton where he finished his schooling. And after, he did a sabbatical year. All those years away from us did good to him, I think. He ended up quieting down."

"His sabbatical year?" asks John, mouth full of honey.

"When he was twenty years old he spent a year in Italy."

The soldier's fork nearly hits the empty plate and he must squeeze it hard in his fist to not show something's wrong. Does Charles lie, embarrassed by a reality too rough to handle, or did Sherlock and Mycroft really make their parents think this year spent in rehab was actually a trip post-diploma like a lot of young people do? He keeps his head lowered, only lifts up his eyes and must pinch his lips to not say a word, because when he looks at the quiet father's face, it is clear that he doesn't know a thing about what Sherlock went through. John starts again, his voice slightly shivering, but the older man doesn't seem to have the observation faculties of his younger son, thank God.

"Yesterday, your wife told me Sherlock only had two friends in his life. Who was the second one? He never mentioned him."

"Victor Trevor. A nice young man he was sharing his bedroom in Eton with. Very rich family, but the poor boy, his father got killed when he was eighteen. It's the only person Sherlock ever mentioned. Besides you, of course."

"Ah, he told you about me?" ironically laughs John, who pertinently knows Sherlock must have not talked about him a lot because, well, he _is_ Sherlock.

Charles opens his eyes in astonishment, doesn't even smile and nods.

"He talked about you all the time."

* * *

On the front door, John waits for Margaret, still in the living-room with the telephone cable wrapped up around her finger. He buttoned up his jacket until the very last button, a subconscious legacy after all those years by saying goodbye to his parents after the traditional monthly visit when his mother, escorting him to the door, always told him he should be better dressed "_before you catch your death._" He lowers his chin, ready to touch his torso with it by looking at the buttons and smiles in a forced grimace, because today he really is trying to catch up to death - Sherlock's death. He erases with a quick nod all the familial memories and lifts up his head toward Charles, his face illuminated by a tender smile, nonetheless sad.

"Thank you for letting me stay here, Mr. Holmes. I'm sorry I didn't warn you earlier."

"You are at home here, John. However I'd like to ask you something."

"Yeah, sure," smiles the younger man, lifting up his chin like the boy scout he was for a long time.

"Stop giving false hope to my wife. Since the day Mycroft called us to tell us that... that Sherlock killed himself, she never believed it. Not once. She didn't even want to go to London to go to the funeral, and I stayed here, by her side on the sofa, watching telly while my son was buried a few miles away. You know, Margaret didn't have an easy life. She had a miscarriage right before she had Sherlock and I think... I think she refuses his death. She's protecting herself, in a way, by disregarding it. Do you understand?"

The older Holmes' voice is soft, like a plaster on a woman's sorrow who'd like to be strong by ignoring her wounds. John can hear her laugh a few meters away. He just nods.

"Do this for her, I'm begging you. And do this for me. I couldn't do my mourning. Don't spit on it, I won't survive it."

The blond man nods again, unable to speak.

"Good... She's coming back; let's talk about something else, shall we?"

Margaret appears on the front door and puts her jumper back on her shoulders.

"Mrs. McClauskey is waiting for us, darling. John, do you have everything you need? Call us if you need anything, okay?"

He nods again, again and again. Words flew away with hope.

"Be careful on the road, my boy; people here drive way too fast."

She leans and takes him in her arms so he holds and holds again this woman who gave him the ephemeral bravery to pursue his quest. His thanks are silence; the older one still understands them. He turns around one more time in the alley to salute them, before getting in the car.

He takes the first right, drives at a ridiculously slow speed in this residential area and turns once more to the left before parking on the verge. He turns the key, turns off the contact, puts his forehead on the wheel and gets rid of all the air in his lungs.

_You talked about me all the time? For Christ's sake, Sherlock, I didn't even know they were alive. Why do you do this, why does death seem more important to your eyes than life? Why couldn't you arrive one morning in the kitchen and tell me 'John! My mother does the best stuffed tomatoes on Earth and she wants to make you some!'? Why can't you call me, just one time, to tell me 'John! I'm alive, let's go eat stuffed tomatoes at my parent's house!'? Why do I keep believing?_

_Believe_. He never realised before how ugly this word sounds. Flabby alliteration, like a feather that's dancing in front of eyes, but too far away for him to be able to stretch his hand and catch it.

He straightens up, drums his fingers on the soft plastic wheel and wonders what all of this is really about. It's not a game, it's not a book where he'll get answers on the last page, it's his life, for Christ's sake, and he's devoting it to his- to _Hope_.

He catches his bag on his left, brings himself to his knees and opens it quickly. He looks again at the printed pages of the congress where he highlighted with a yellow highlighter the name of the hotel partner of the event. It's probably useless to go, the coroner won't probably even remember Sherlock, or will refuse to testify to Lestrade, so before he gets the contact back out, he takes his mobile out of his right pocket and dials the number of the hotel. He swears he'll get back to London immediately if Dhinnom is unreachable.

"UMI Brighton hotel, may I help you?"

The receptionist answered so fast, John didn't have time to prepare his speech:

"Hi, yes, well... could I speak to Doctor Dhinnom please? He's a member of the congress and..."

"One moment, please."

The masculine voice gave way to an umpteenth diffusion of Vivaldi's Four Seasons - Spring right now - but John is convinced he would listen to Summer, Autumn and Winter then Spring again before someone on this damned Earth will put Dhinnom on the phone.

"Doctor Dhinnom is in his bedroom right now. Should I transfer the call?"

Vivaldi stopped, John's heart too. He hangs up, rejects the bag on the passenger seat and puts the contact back, before crashing the accelerator pedal.


	5. Dr Dhinnom

Note: Hi everyone! New chapter today, sorry for the delay but the next ones will come shortly. Meanwhile, enjoy your reading and thank you for your lovely reviews/fav/follow!  
Beta: 1001 thanks to **PJTL156**.

* * *

When John arrives in Brighton it doesn't rain anymore and he must confess the sun is slightly burning his right forearm skin exceeding over the open window. He parks in the seaside parking lot and sits in front of the hotel from a network he already visited with Sherlock when they were working on the Liverpool Central Bank robbery two years ago. In those places, every room is the same, impersonal and cold; and despite their reasonable prices, if he can avoid them, he does so. He gets closer to the glass doors, lifts his eyes with a gaze full of hate when they don't automatically open and is obligated to make two steps backward, then forward, then to lift his arms to be seen by the sensor. He's not _that_ small, dammit...

With a determined pace (determined to forget this slightly shameful moment), he hurtles down the hall and automatically goes to lean on the front desk and discovers a young man behind it, side-parted brown hair and iron tag with his name on it: Dustin.

"Hi, could you please tell Dr. Dhinnom I'm waiting for him at the bar?"

"One moment, please."

The young man smiles and faces his computer where John can't see the screen. It's by automatism that he slightly leans forward to try to see what he could hide from him and his heart jumps like a crazy horse in his chest because he's this close to finding the man who'll be able to make Lestrade open the coffin, and with that suddenly every doubt Sherlock's dad sprouted in his mind seems to finally fade away.

"And you are... ?"

"Dr. Watson. A colleague."

He smiles, maybe a bit too much, but he can't help it if he's happy, and he goes to take a seat in the back room. His right leg shakes unconsciously, his moist hands tighten up like a prayer, his thumbs bump into each other quickly. He turns around in a jump when a pretty blonde leans into him.

"Can I help you?"

"Oh, hi, yes; coffee, please."

She blinks several times and John wonders what was that difficult to understand in "coffee, please."

"Are you Doctor Watson?" she asks, frowning her perfectly shaved eyebrows.

"Yes..." How does she know his name?

"I am Doctor Dhinnom, you're the one who called for me, right?"

The soldier's lips open up under the shock but he doesn't know if he must burst into laughter or just burst out and break the table on which his elbows sink little by little. A strangled laugh escapes from his tied throat and he has to put a sweaty hand on his tensed face to keep calm.

"_You_ are Doctor Dhinnom?"

"If you're going to tell me the usual rubbish about female doctors, please note that I'd have no scruple to explode the salt cellar on your head."

"No! No that's not what I wanted to say..." he answers, deeply sorry, holding his heavy head full of deception in the palm of his hands and forces a smile on his face to show his good faith. "I was looking for Jef. Jef Dhinnom."

"Oh..." This time, it's her lips which seem to not remember how to close up.

She takes a place next to him and impatiently raises a hand to the man behind the bar to call him. John didn't even think about it. He looks at her, guesses easily she's around forty thanks to her cheeks marked by discreet wrinkles, and loses himself one second in her green eyes before she turns around to face him. He sticks out his chest without knowing why.

"This happens all the time; Jef is my husband. Ex-husband. Well, my husband, legally speaking, but we're in the process of getting a divorce."

Okay, he knows why; because she's drop-dead gorgeous.

"I'm sorry to hear that." No, he's certainly not.

"Don't be. And don't ever marry a doctor; it's difficult enough to be one, so to live with one..." She raises an amused eyebrow and turns to face the waiter who quickly came by them. "Two coffees, very dark, please. And don't be stingy with the speculoos." She smiles before facing John again. He likes her already.

"Will your husband... ex-husband, sorry, be at the Congress too?"

"Oh no. He's busy doing a replacement job in the North, I think..."

"How long have you been separated?"

"More than a year. But as he's doing nothing but replacement, he always travels. The divorce papers are impossible to sign at the same time by our lawyers, the judge and the pope; anyway, all that is useless paperwork when two consenting adults only dream about one thing: to go live their life away from the other one."

John Watson is a romantic, whatever anyone can say. He more pulls face at the evocation of a divorce than in front of an open heart surgery, but this woman is so smiley and he is smiling just as much. The fact that she's really, really pretty helps.

"Why are you looking for my husband, Dr. Watson?"

"You're going to make fun of me..."

"I just offered to break your skull with a salt cellar -which happens to be plastic- when I thought you were misogynistic; I think we passed the mocking phase."

He smiles, quickly thanks the waiter who brought them the coffee and answers, his voice lower, feeling slightly shameful.

"I have to ask him if it's one of my friends he did an autopsy on."

"Why?"

"Because I don't think he did and I'd need him to open the coffin."

"Oh."

Quite unexpectedly, she smiles, pushes back against the chair and folds her arms on her chest. She's looking at John with her finely done-up eyes and he has literally no idea what she has in mind. He looks at her naked neck and doesn't see the inch of a cross or a baptism medallion, it's silly but it would have reassured him. Because it's where he is now; he understands the believer he liked to criticize in the past, because he's now one of them. Of course, the miracles he's asking for can only be realised by Sherlock, but to believe in an invisible force is a delicious agony only the religious people can understand.

He feels his face burning and feels so stupid to have crossed England for this, to make a fool of himself in front of a stranger. So he finishes his coffee in one go and rises on his feet.

"Sorry I wasted your time."

He catches his jacket, gets off the bench seat and hurries his feet across the carpet.

"Dr. Watson," calls the woman's voice.

He stops, sighs and turns around.

"Do you have any plans for tonight?"

* * *

The salmon was undeniably well-cooked, but it's the sauce John liked the most. To be honest, he hesitated before going into this restaurant Mary-Ann mentioned - the woman he met at the hotel. Generally, those kinds of places with the word "Saint" followed by a posh surname are out of reach from his wallet, which has not been getting filled since a few months back. But Mary-Ann has green eyes and John is a man.

That's why he's now seated at this dark wooden table, on this chair covered with a cozy leather on which he could die by comfort, looking at the plate he emptied with a frightening speed. It's not very awkward since Mary-Ann did the same.

She's gone to the loo to put some lipstick on and John liked her honesty. He liked everything about her tonight. He listened when she talked about her medical studies, in which he identifies himself very much with. He laughed until his ribs hurt when she told him about her ski accident, absolutely ridiculous, which gave her no broken bones but the biggest shame of her life. He tensed when she asked him to talk about himself. She saw it, smiled, told him she had to put some make-up on but that when she'd be back, it was his turn to endure 20 Questions .

He could leave, right now. He could go pay and run away to avoid telling to the most beautiful woman of this city how he became a shadow searching another shadow, who holds on to a dream as others hold on to love. He could. He _should_.

"So, where were we?"

He raises his head and inspires to give himself some courage. Was she this pretty before?

"You were talking about the congress."

"No, we were about to talk about you," she insists, imperturbable, leaning toward him before putting her blond hair behind her ears.

John looks at her and it's obvious: she is interested in his story. She laid her elbow on the table, tilted her head toward him to be sure to hear him over the sound of the table on their right made of drunk friends, and she looks at him, so deep into his eyes he's afraid she might get to his soul.

"There's nothing interesting to say."

"You just drove sixty miles to find the coroner who could prove your friend isn't dead. It's interesting enough to stop me eating my green pea soup."

He smiles and starts to fold his napkin, to play with it, to do anything on this damn table to not look at her in the eyes.

"Okay. His name is Sherlock, we've know each other for three years now. Nine months ago there were complications at his... job. One day he called me, he was on Bart's roof –where we met, by the way– and he just... jumped."

Mary-Ann shivers, John didn't miss the raising hair on her forearm.

"I was there. I had this kind of blackout. I got closer and he was there on the ground and..."

Damn, where did his voice go? He opens his lips again but nothing comes out. It's the knot in his throat which stops him as much as speaking and crying, because it's the first time he's talked about all this since the psychologist.

"But he didn't jump, did he?" calmly asks Mary-Ann and John raises his head.

"I don't know. But it doesn't make any sense. You know, we all know someone of whom we're afraid we're going to hear about by a midnight phone-call after someone found their body hanged God-knows-where. And we all know someone who could never, never do anything like that. Sherlock's that kind of guy. He likes to... _understand_ way too much to stop all of this, all those mysteries, for this kind of bullshit."

"John..." she hesitates, caressing with the palm of her hand on the table, and almost whispers. "Why would he fake his death?"

The soldier doesn't know what to answer, so he shrugs and feels so perfectly stupid. So stupid to believe it, so stupid to show what he's made of to a woman he's known only since a few hours ago, so stupid to have absolutely no idea where this story will bring him.

"Let's start from the start," proposes the blond-haired woman, raising a finger to catch his attention back. "Why did he jump off of the roof?"

"Sherlock's a detective and since two years ago there's been this weird man who harasses him. I know they found his body on the roof, it means he was there before Sherlock jumped. Apparently, he shot himself in his head."

"So Sherlock would have killed himself right after his enemy died?" she frowns and John knows she understands him.

"Exactly! It makes no sense!" he shouts, leaning to her, creating unintendedly this cocoon where he feels at ease. "Something happened on that roof, something that made him... run away. Something that makes him hide. But from whom?"

"From you?"

John raises his head and looks at her. He's not sure it's not a kind of torture she just put him through.

"What, why...?" he mumbles.

"Forgive me, John, I don't know. I was just saying, you know..." She leans forward and catches his hands that she squeezes hard. "John, I believe you."

He looks at her thin fingers caressing his rough skin and doesn't move. The contact is way too pleasant and she told the words he needed to hear. He smiles at her, cracks his neck to feel better and calls the waiter to ask for the bill. He looks by the bay-window, the dark night covered over the sea and murmurs:

"Do you want me to see you to your hotel?"

* * *

There are people who have absolutely no problem with that; for sure they exist and John admires those people as if they were Stephen Hawking. The worst part is that he pertinently knows he's being filmed. Someone in this damn city sees him in black and white, eyebrows frowned, ready to crash together, mouth tight-lipped in a shapeless form and hesitating fingers above a tactile keyboard.

For the love of God, this is _just_ a cash machine.

The soldier surrenders face to the inhuman complex technology and crashes his forefinger on the pictograms that seem more appropriate. Always having some cash in his pocket is a reflex given by his dad who taught him that you never know what can happen and to have money in the wallet is a luxury you shouldn't avoid. With time, John understood it was his father's way to hide from his wife the proof of his daily purchase of liters and liters of alcohol. What can you do about it? No family is perfect. Except maybe Sherlock's, but it's another story he won't forget to talk about with the detective when he finds him.

He turns around when the machine swallows his credit card to read it (or to rip it with its sharp teeth, he doesn't know for sure) and looks at Mary-Ann a few meters away, on the side of the road. Why did a woman as interesting as her offer him diner? Why does a woman as intelligent as her laugh at his jokes? Why does a woman as hot as her _exist_?

His attention is held one second by the bus that stops a few meters from her and by the group of young men that come out of it. He wonders if it wouldn't be better for them to take it to go back to her hotel, but in the end he thinks it's more romantic to go by foot along the beach, as he intended to. Not that he intended any romantic evening ending. Well, no more than that.

He catches the too few notes that come out of the machine, whispers a Thank you without noticing and puts everything in his wallet before coming back, hands in his pocket, to Mary-Ann. He screws up his eyes and distinguishes three silhouettes around her. Maybe they're friends –which he hopes not because the evening was going pretty well with just the two of them and he doesn't want to be forgotten in favour of men more handsome and funnier than him. He sees the arm of one of the guys catching Mary-Ann's who steps backwards. Okay, he would have preferred if those were friends.

"Hey!"

He noticeably quickens his pace, arrives near the group and recognises in the young men's eyes this glow so particular which says _I had a good night between dope and crack; would you have some Jack Daniel's to rinse my mouth?_ Mary-Ann folds her arms against her breasts and puts her left hand on her naked throat.

"Hey, man, everything's fine; we were just sayin' goodnight to your girl."

My girl, internally sighs John by raising his eyes so high in his orbits he feels they can merge with his eyebrows -the kids must be pretty wrecked to think he's dating a woman like her.

"Great, well, goodnight then."

He smiles at them, agitates his head in a gesture similar to a silent threat and slightly puts his hand on the doctor's shoulder to ask her to quicken her pace– which she does right away.

"Hey, what about a foursome? It'll be more expensive but it could be nice!"

Mary-Ann laughed with a strangled sound, visibly more amused than shocked by this highly forward proposition, but it's John who stops to turn around to the group.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Leave it, John..." she tells him, coming this time to grab his shoulder in a universal sign to say _Let's go now_.

"Oh, come on, mate; we saw you took some money outa the cash machine!" shouts one of the guys who didn't open his mouth before.

John understands, he has a brain, he reads the papers; unfortunately, the association of woman-object that a lot of men have is a frightening faculty to express is something he heard about too many times. And it makes him sick. He gets closer to the young man who opens his mouth made of dry lips, covered with blood barely coagulated. He knows those eyes, those who say _I need some sleep_; he knows this pale skin which says _I need a real meal_; he knows those arms filled by holes, those who scream _I need help_.

"Well, this is very nice, I thank you for your interest, but we have to go. John, are you coming? Gentlemen, good evening." Mary-Ann takes her part still a few steps behind him, clearly not excited by the mere idea of what John is about to do. Whatever he is about to do.

"Do you have a poker up your arse, whore?" laughs the one with the wooly hat that hides his greasy blond hair.

"She still has more class than your slutty mother," John hears himself saying.

The three pairs of eyes open big and wide under the shock and if John had the occasion to be honest, he would have told them it totally and irreparably came out without the authorisation of his own brain. Like the flick-knife the younger man is now pressing against his blue jumper.

Not this one; Mrs. Hudson will never agree to sew it. Again.

John catches the armed wrist with his left hand and tenses around the knifed fist with his right and twists it in a curt gesture. The movement is as quick as when he was once taught this, years ago. The young man's arm turns around and all his body falls on the pavement in an abrupt sound. He releases him just before the foot of the older man of the group kicks him in the back of his knee. Thank God, the right knee. The soldier barely grinds, feels himself give way, adrenaline to his hands, and watches the man who just hit him to keep him still just in time to bring up his knee to his stomach which trembles under the assault, as do his eardrums under the junkie's scream.

He doesn't have the time to turn around before the last one jumped to his neck; he's squeezing between his arms covered with bruises, and John feels, really precisely, his feet sinking in the sound, the heat of the sun that burns his forehead where his helmet fell off, and the smells of the spices from the market down the road. Whatever he lives through, wherever he is, he's sure now, everything will always come back to Afghanistan.

He hears Mary-Ann shouting and opens his bulging eyes to see the doctor fighting next to him, and that's the limit. With a well-placed nudge, he succeeds to make his aggressor give up and turns around to hit him on his damned, way-too-young nose to have sniffed small white lines.

"John, let's go!" shouts Mary-Ann whose voice echoes the police car sirens around them.

He rubs his hand, his eyes fixed on the nose he just broke. This was for what he would have done to Mary-Ann if John didn't arrive in time. He falls on the body and crushes once more his fist to the face.

_This__ is for the time when Harry came home covered in blood and tears after she came from the university by foot, alone and in the middle of the night. __This__ is for your parents who you're putting through all of this. __This__ is for Sherlock, and even if it has nothing, nothing to do with you, it's killing me. Every. Single. Day._

"John!" screams Mary-Ann, catching his arm she's pulling with an unexpected force.

He nearly falls; his legs are heavier than ever, his muscles paralyzed a few seconds before he manages to catch the knife next to him, shakes his head energetically and gets up on his feet. He catches the hand with the pink nails and starts to run.

_Romantic walk across the beach_, yeah, right...

* * *

The small cotton soaked with disinfectant, Mary-Ann presses the wound above the soldier's right eyebrow a bit more. He sits on the edge of the doctor's bedroom bath, faces the gigantic mirror and observes himself. He doesn't even know how he cut himself there. He looks at his neck, still a little bit red, his jumper pulled during the attack, and his eyes. He knows those eyes. Those are eyes that saw death until they confused blood and sand. Those are eyes that are scaring him.

He raises a hand to catch Mary-Ann's to stop her from moving. She's soft after being strong and she has some bruises on her tanned skin too. He looks at her without even raising his chin. Her eyes don't scare him. They're expressing the envy in the most beautiful way. He doesn't deserve her. He's not sure he deserves someone on this earth. He sees his mocking reflection once more, contemplates their bodies so close, his hand in hers, their fingers interlacing. He _doesn't_ deserve her.

But he _wants_ her.

* * *

John caresses the skin of her neck and, clearly as a soft gesture, the blond hair on her back. She unbuttons one by one his shirt's buttons and he gets closer to kiss her again. She takes off his top and he automatically extends an arm to turn off the light. She moans against his lips and puts it back on right away. He opens her skirt's zip before once again raising his hand to turn off the light. She whispers against his lips.

"Why are you switching it off?"

"It's cosier, don't you think?" he lies as well as he can.

"... You don't want me to see you." And that wasn't a question.

"I'm afraid it'll make you sober up."

She smiles, putting her hair behind her ears before she turns the light back on. She puts a hand on his bare chest and scrutinises every millimeter. He's thinner than before, she can't know that but she can guess herself that seeing ribs is not his natural condition. He's not made of exquisite muscles —impossible to hide that— but that doesn't seem to bother her. In the room, it's only the soldier's cheeks that get red under the discovery. Finally her green eyes stop on the scar on his shoulder and John tenses. She must have felt it because she tightens her hands on his forearms.

"This is what you didn't want me to see?"

"I can keep wearing my shirt, I don't mind."

She looks at him with a teasing gaze that means "Idiot" before kissing his neck.

"It's a gunshot, right...?"

"Afghanistan." He won't say more.

"I would have never guessed."

John looks at the ceiling and whispers an "I know" that makes him shiver.

They lean into each other and this time leave the lights on.

* * *

When John wakes up, he's not quite sure where he is. He knows this bedroom, this mattress a little bit hard, and he remembers the meeting with the Central Bank's head of security. Sherlock said the man has debts but John didn't even have time to ask him how he figured it out.

"Sherl... ?"

He sighs and leans a hand on his eyes he didn't even have the courage to open. It's not Liverpool. It's not Sherlock. It's Brighton and Doctor Dhinnom– well, the other one. He still needs a few seconds before realising his pillow is a breast he'd caressed a lot earlier. He opens his left eye with difficulty and moves his head just enough to understand that Mary-Ann isn't sleeping either.

"Are you okay...?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up," she whispers, caressing his neck, and John puts his head back on the _pillow_ before closing his eyes again.

"Was I that bad?"

She doesn't answer; it wasn't funny– unless she doesn't want to laugh. He fondles her belly and tries to stay awake, despite the soft Morpheus' song which offers him a ride.

"Why did you tell me all this?" she asks with a distant voice.

"Because you listened to me."

She uses her nails to gently scratch his neck and this time the soldier gives up, he falls asleep with any willpower.

"Sometimes, life is risking everything for a truth you're the only one to see. So you have to trust yourself, John."

He's not sure he didn't dream the rest of her sentence:

_And trust him_.

* * *

In the parking lot, John puts his bag on the passenger seat and hears the metallic sound of the flick-knife which must have bumped into the tape he got at the Holmes' house. Mary-Ann didn't put any make-up on and he thinks she's quite beautiful like this. He has a tendency to think the woman he has slept with even more beautiful after his meeting with their naked bodies. They smile and there are one thousand reasons which could make everything awkward, but it's just not.

"Be careful, I heard there was an accident on the exit number 23 to London."

"It'll be over when I get there."

They smile again, and this time it's more embarrassing. It's difficult to say goodbye to someone you'll never see again.

"If, by any chance, you talk to your ex-husband, could you tell him I'm looking for him? Give him my email address, it could...it could help me."

"I sincerely don't think you can rely on me for that," she apologises, pinching her lips.

"Of course; no problem."

He gets closer, hesitates to shake her hand (too impersonal), to kiss her cheek (too French), to kiss her deeply with his tongue in her throat (too, _too_ French), but she puts an end to his Calvary by hugging him.

"What are you going to do now?"

"I have no idea... First, I should get that car back to my landlady and then..." He doesn't have anything to add, it's too early, too hard to keep believing.

She hugs him again and pats his shoulder. He goes into his car, salutes her with a nod and puts the contact on. He doesn't look in the rear-view mirror when he leaves the parking lot. There's no point in looking behind him to a woman who knew how to love him in a way he didn't know was still possible, as there was no point in exchanging their numbers. They discover each other like teenagers for a night, during the day it's the adult life's hook which caught them again and pulled them away. Maybe if Sherlock was still here, things would have gone differently. Maybe. But he doesn't look in the mirror to prevent himself to think about this precise question.

It's at the third red light that his mobile rings. He hesitates to answer, looks around him to be sure there are no policemen and answers despite the unknown number.

"Hello?"

"John? This is Charles Holmes; I'm not bothering you, am I?"

"No, of course not. Is everything alright?"

"Yes, yes. Well, it rained a lot but the begonias should be able to get over it."

John smiles despite himself but can't prevent the knot in his belly from hurting him because Mr. Holmes needs to speak faster if John wants to keep his driver's license.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes? I'm driving, so..."

"Oh, right, of course, I'll be quick. I have something that might interest you."

_Sherlock?_

"I'm listening."

"I have found Victor Trevor's number if you wish to meet him."

John sighs and takes advantage of the never-ending red light to put his forehead on the wheel. Why would he want the number of Sherlock's first friend? What will it bring him to meet the man who knew the detective before he even was one? Wouldn't it be better for him to go back to London as he planned to and to call Sarah to ask –again– for her help? He opens an eye, calls back to the horns behind him and looks at the light, now green.

"Let me pull over so I can write it down."


End file.
